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On Baseball; It's Not a Typo: Peralta and the Indians Are Rolling

THE Cleveland Indians have a player named Peralta who is different in at least two respects from other players of similar name or origin: he is a Dominican shortstop who was not born in San Pedro de Macoris, the cradle of Dominican shortstops, and he doesn't know how to spell his first name correctly.

Well, he really does know how to spell it; he just spells it confoundingly differently. He is Jhonny Peralta, and no matter how he spells it, he is making a name for himself as the Cleveland Indians' shortstop.

The 23-year-old Peralta is a major reason the Indians are contending for the American League wild-card spot. The Indians spent most of last week virtually tied for the wild-card lead with the Yankees and the Oakland Athletics.

Which team doesn't fit in this picture? Clue: it's the one whose owner would find a wild-card entry into the playoffs unacceptable. After all, the Yankees' payroll is twice as large as the payrolls of the Indians and the Athletics combined.

The Athletics have been down the wild-card road before, going to the playoffs in that role in 2001 and losing out to Boston in 2003. The Indians finished one game behind Seattle in the wild-card standings in 2000. The Yankees went to the playoffs twice via the wild card, in 1995 and 1997.

Given that a wild-card team has won the last three World Series, that playoff slot is not to be belittled. The Indians certainly don't see it as a backdoor way of getting into the playoffs.

"To say we're contending with the Yankees and the A's was not our expectation coming into the season," said Mark Shapiro, the Indians' general manager. "If you told us our record would be 14, 15 games over .500, I would have said we'd be leading our division."

The Chicago White Sox, however, eliminated that likelihood, so the Indians are left with the challenge of beating out a team from each of the other divisions. (A month from now, it could be the Red Sox and the Angels.) Shapiro says he tries not to scrutinize the wild-card standings daily.

"It's so unproductive to watch, but I do watch it," he said. "I have to watch it. Our manager is great. He doesn't even pay attention. He's so good at getting the players to focus on what they're doing."

The players have been doing extremely well for more than a month. Just about seven weeks ago, the Indians were four games and four teams from the wild-card lead. The Minnesota Twins, a team ahead of them in their division, had the best second-place record.

Since then, though, the Indians have won 23 of 33 games, catapulting past the Twins and the Orioles. They are a game behind the Yankees and the Athletics.

Peralta, designated hitter Travis Hafner and catcher Victor Martinez have been largely responsible for the surge. Peralta's placement in the third spot in the batting order was especially propitious because his first game as the No. 3 hitter was July 23, the start of the 33-game spurt.

"Our offense got going after he moved to third," Shapiro said. "We moved him from ninth to eighth to sixth to third, which is a rough responsibility for a player in his first year in the big leagues, and he hasn't blinked."

Peralta is hitting .296 with 20 home runs and 63 runs batted in. He has joined Woodie Held as the only shortstops in Indians history to hit 20 home runs in a season. Offensively, he ranks behind only Miguel Tejada of Baltimore among American League shortstops.

"Jhonny's a guy that we expected to have a good year," Shapiro said, "but nobody could have expected him to produce at the level he has produced. His defense started off a little rough, but it's tough to be compared to Omar Vizquel," the Indians' dazzling shortstop the past 11 years.

"He's so even-keeled and so unexcitable and so consistent in his approach," Shapiro added of Peralta, whose parents misspelled his first name on his birth certificate. "It's a trait you see in veteran guys."

Eric Wedge, the Indians' manager, moved Peralta to the third spot in the batting order after Hafner was hit in the mouth with a pitch, sustained a concussion and went on the disabled list. Hafner missed 17 games but nevertheless continues to be the Indians' leading hitter with a .317 batting average, 22 home runs and 80 R.B.I.

In 22 games since he returned from the disabled list Aug. 4, Hafner has batted .341 and knocked in 17 runs. Then there is Martinez, who since the All-Star Game break is hitting .411.

With that kind of hitting, do the Indians need anything else to win the wild card?

"The bottom four in the lineup have to be more consistent and a little more productive," Shapiro said.

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Derrek Lee of the Cubs is still in position to win the Triple Crown in the National League. Through yesterday, he led the league in hitting (.347), was second in home runs (37 to Andruw Jones's 40) and had driven in 91 runs. (Albert Pujols led with 99.) But Lee experienced the difficulty of the feat during an eight-week stretch from June 26 to Aug. 19.

With the potency of the White Sox, the re-emergence of the Indians and the Twins' continued presence as a threat, the A.L. Central is becoming the league's toughest division. Add the Detroit Tigers to the mix, and it could easily become the strongest.

The Tigers, under the direction of Dave Dombrowski, are worth watching. The two most recent reasons are second baseman Placido Polanco and first baseman Carlos Peña. The Tigers acquired Polanco in a trade with Philadelphia for Ugueth Urbina on June 8 and recalled Peña from the minors on Aug. 19.

Polanco, whom the Cardinals included in a three-player package for Scott Rolen three years ago, has been remarkable for the Tigers. As if his .349 batting average as a leadoff batter were not impressive enough, when he has led off an inning, he has hit .500 (35 for 70). He also has made only one error in 53 games with the Tigers.

"It's hard picking out anything he's done poorly since he's been with us," Dombrowski said. "He's been on fire offensively."

With the Cardinals, Polanco played all over the infield. The Phillies used him at second and third. The Tigers have made him their second baseman. In the past five seasons, he batted better than .300 twice and .288 or better every season. He was hitting .316 for the Phillies when they traded him.

"He's been sort of an unsung player," Dombrowski said. "Maybe moving around from position to position has been an enemy to him. This is one of the first times he's had an opportunity to play regularly at one position."

The Tigers like Polanco so much, they signed him to a four-year, $18.4 million contract extension this month.

The Tigers also like Peña, but in the first two months of the season, he batted .181 with 3 homers and 14 R.B.I. in 41 games.

"He struggled," Dombrowski said. "He got himself in one of those mental funks, and it's hard to get out of it. He was pressing, swinging at bad pitches and taking good pitches."

Two and a half months in Toledo enabled the 27-year-old Peña to rediscover his swing. In his first five games back with the Tigers, the left-handed Peña slugged 6 home runs, drove in 12 runs and hit .563 (9 for 16).

Peña hit the first two home runs in his first post-Toledo game. The box score listed the Blue Jays who threw the pitches he hit: Bush, League. Dave Bush and Brandon League have been reunited with League's second promotion of the season to the majors.

Ironing Out the Details

Officials from Major League Baseball and the players union are traveling to Italy, where they plan to meet Tuesday with Cuban officials to try to nail down Cuba's participation in the first World Baseball Classic next March. The Cuban officials are in Italy for a tournament.

Japan is the only other country among the 16 invited teams that has not responded, but reports from Japan and South Korea say that the Japanese players association has agreed to let its members play in the World Cup-style competition.

Defining Latino Heritage

Whatever criteria Major League Baseball used to select its list of 60 Latino players for its voting for the Latino Legends team, common sense had to be one of them, and common sense says that Ted Williams, despite his Mexican mother, and Reggie Jackson, despite his half-Puerto Rican father, should not be considered Latin players.

Their inclusion on the ballot would have gone well beyond political correctness, raised far more questions than their exclusion and just might have been insulting to Latinos whose heritage more closely matches that of players like Roberto Clemente and Juan Marichal.

But mentioning Jackson as a Latino recalls Mickey Rivers's riveting remark to Jackson nearly 30 years ago when they played for the Yankees. Jackson was giving Rivers a hard time, and Rivers responded:

"Reginald Martinez Jackson. You got a white man's first name, a Puerto Rican's middle name and a black man's last name. No wonder you're so messed up."

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A version of this article appears in print on August 28, 2005, on Page 8008002 of the National edition with the headline: On Baseball; It's Not a Typo: Peralta and the Indians Are Rolling. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe